Bibliotherapy
by Sally Mn
Summary: "...Because if anything is going to kickstart Doctor Jackson's missing memories into some sort of working order, his favorite places in the whole of Colorado ought to do it."


**Bibliotherapy**

Soft, slightly flat door chimes. Weak, shifting sunlight filtering through time-dulled windows and making the dust motes seem to swirl. Soft rustle of pages, and that smell he hasn't come across for a year now... a mix of the dust, aging leather and old paper, stale coffee dregs in forgotten cups, and a general... mustiness, with a hint of dank sweetness.

He really _hasn't _missed all this. Not at all. He'll keep telling himself that.

And he's, well, kind of sure that his ex-_ex_-teammate hasn't either. After all, there really couldn't have been old bookshops in the higher realms... or could there? He'll have to ask Daniel, when and if Daniel remembers anything _about _the higher realms he's spent the last year swanning about in, or about old bookshops, or about _anything__ at all _for that matter...

Which is why Jack O'Neill is standing in the doorway of _Books and Crannies_ and breathing in that old bookstore smell that he hasn't missed. Because if _anything _is going to kickstart Doctor Jackson's missing memories into some sort of working order, his favorite places in the whole of Colorado ought to do it.

Such as _Booktique_, Colorado Springs.

_The Book Barn_, Greeley.

_Buy the Book_, Aurora.

_Bibiophilia_, Colorado Springs.

_Bookwyrms_, Denver.

_Bookends_, Denver.

_The Bookman Cometh_, Fort Collins

... and back home to _Books and Crannies, _here in good old Colorado Springs.

"I hope you're happy, Doctor Jackson," he mutters.

**~oOo~**

He has to admit it, though. Doctor Jackson _looks_ happier than he has ever since SG-1 ran across him, lost in body and mind, on Planet P4T-Ass-End-of-Nowhere - also known as Not-The-Lost-City - several weeks ago. Daniel's wide blue eyes might still have too much of that odd, vague, wary blankness that Jack wasn't about to admit actually _hurt_ to see; his fingers as he first touched the battered covers and rifled through stained pages had still been uncertain, even a little nervous. But within minutes of entering _Booktique _two days ago, he had brightened up like one of his own elderly reading lamps, and by now he was positively glowing -

Jack stomps on _that _thought, on the word itself being in the same though as Daniel ever again. No glowing, not ever again, thanks.

But still... damn it, Daniel is almost _shining,_ in the good old-fashioned happy-geek-being-geeky way Jack does like to see in both of his scientists_._ Right now, Daniel is sprawled in an old chair, surrounded by most of the contents of the formerly overloaded 'Prehistory and Antiquities' and 'Curiosa' shelves, his complimentary cup of coffee cooling on the nearest pile of leather-clad, pricey-looking hardbacks, happily lost in... whatever _this_ esoteric old volume is about. Jack has no idea, but whatever it is, he's pretty sure it's coming back to the base with them. He can almost hear it clicking with those fragments of memory floating round Daniel's brilliant but at the minute all too blank brain. And with every click, maybe another small piece of the brain is falling into place...

Jack can hope, anyway. He finds a chair of his own, soft and squashy with years of readers, sinks into it and sips his own coffee. It's been a looooong day.

With all due respect, it's been a looooong _week_ ferrying Daniel to each and every one of these bookstores, and as his team leader, Jack had looked danger - of death from boredom, at least - in the face and bravely volunteered.

Okay, he'd seen Carter's point that it might help the memory process. At least, he did after she went on and on and _on_ for long enough about it.

And okay, he could see Carter's other point, the one about it giving _her_ a chance to go through Daniel's bookshelves with Teal'c to quietly remove any that _someone_ (and damn it, if Daniel found out and threw the sort of fit Jack recalled all too well, he _would _fink on Quinn, no matter how much Carter disapproved!) had written in. In pen. Carter has never really understood the appeal of old books - she liked her information overload brand spanking new, or even better, electronic and easily updated - but she understands their Daniel, and that for him old can never be out of date.

_Greater love hath no hard science geek than this,_ Jack thinks, _that she go through way more soft science volumes than _anyone_ should have to in one lifetime just to find any incriminating markings before their very own soft scientist does._

**~oOo~**

Anyway... right now, and maybe for the first time since they'd brought him home, Daniel really is simply, perfectly _happy. _And if Jack was being honest (or being tactless, or as Daniel _used_ to put it, "being Jack"), he'd damn well say Daniel _ought_ to be happy. In the two days they've been shopping, he's bought up something like fifty-odd books of varying ages and states of decay. What's more, he's done it all on the USAF's dime since they still haven't worked out how to get the recently undeceased's credit cards activated, and General Hammond - like the rest of them - is way too thrilled to have the man back to nitpick over a mere two, three... seven or eight hundred dollars worth of 'restocking'. Anything Daniel wants, _anything_ that might help Daniel back to himself, Daniel can have as far as the entire base is concerned right now.

Hell, if the Air Force decide to bitch over the 'Bullfinch - A Brief History' (370 pages and counting), 'Britannia Antiqua' (in Latin, of _course_), or - god help them - 'Beliefs of the Bergistani, Volumes 1-18', Hammond will probably stump up the money himself.

Maybe they can just do a whip-round the whole SGC. That'd work.

Jack picks up one of the slightly less shabby volumes on one of the piles surrounding Daniel's chair, taking care not to tip the coffee cup onto not-yet-paid-for merchandise. (That has happened before. At 'Bookends'. And Daniel waited till Jack paid up and carried them all the way back to the truck before mentioning that they were actually ones he'd decided not to buy.) It isn't as impressively decrepit as the ones Daniel is poring over, but if stained covers and the scent of paper mould were any indication... it's older than Daniel. Or Jack himself. Hell, older that Hammond.

He squints at the price, winces, and then looks at the title. "'Minor Babylonian Creation Myths'. _Really,_ Daniel?"

The blue eyes shift to him, vague and questioning. "Mmmm?"

"It's called 'Minor Babylonian Creation Myths'." For _that_ price, Jack thinks, they should be pretty damn Major, but he only _pretends_ to be stupid enough to say so, and only when it's worth it.

"Oh yes. It's a collection from the forties of Middle East gods and legends, a useful secondary source but... I can't remember if I had it before." Daniel rubs his forehead. "I really thought I had a copy, but it's not in my office and Sam doesn't recall seeing it after..."

Yeah. After Daniel... left.

_And anyway, __Carter's probably hidden it till she can check the pages. Right._ "Well, better two copies than none, right?"

Daniel looks at him uncertainly.

Jack tries for a reassuring smile.

Daniel's uncertain look gets a little more uncertain, and Jack decides to change the topic. "How many of those do you want to take back, Daniel? Hammond doesn't care, but your bookshelves are gonna crash if you cram much more in them."

"Uhh... not many, I think." Daniel looks down at the piles on his left, his right, in front, on the chair arm... pretty much everywhere. Jack hopes to god some of those piles are 'not today' or carrying them out is gonna be as much fun as the last seven times. "Eighteen, nineteen, I think." He looks up, blinking at the face Jack tries _not_ to make. "And I may need to come back. When I'm... you know."

_More myself._

Every complaint Jack and his back and his knees want to make is swallowed under the look in those eyes. He shrugs. "Hey, why not? And there are more stores..."

"There are?" Daniel lights up.

"Oh yeah." Jack was the one who found that last, scribbled list of every half-decent new or used bookstore this side of the Rockies. It's still in his left-hand drawer, and Carter and Teal'c used a photocopy to check how many of them were still in business so Jack could do this volunteering and ferrying bit.

_Greater love hath no Colonel, either._

**~oOo~**

Jack fights down a smile, and picks up another volume. Large, fat and by the looks of it, as new, never - or at least rarely - read.

"Budge." He murmurs, oddly nostalgic. That name is one even _he_ knows. "Want this one?"

Daniel lifts expressive eyebrows for a moment, then lowers them in the frown Jack has missed. "Hardly," he says dryly. "It's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. I won't have it in the Mountain, you _know_ that, Jack."

_And when did you remember that, Doctor Jackson?_

Seems the therapy is working.

Daniel's eyes drift back to the book he's reading; he turns a page and is lost again in the words. Jack tries to read the upside-down title at the top of the pages, but he's pretty sure he won't recognize, understand, or give a damn about it.

He sits back, drinks his coffee and leaves his 'Minor Gods' book open on his lap so he can watch - without being _too_ obvious - and for the first time let himself believe that his friend is healing, a little bit more with every dingy page.

**-the end-**


End file.
